Seeing with Other Senses: Gardens for the Blind

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In her upstate New York garden, Di Nardo grows 60 to 70 tomato plants a season, 40 hot peppers and 60 to 70 sweet peppers, as well as garlic, basil, cucumbers, broccoli, sometimes melons and a few flowers, especially marigolds. By any standards, she is a terrific gardener. As such, she has a few tricks that help her throughout the gardening season.

She emphasizes building up the soil and feeding plants early on so they have fewer problems later. Following author Mel Bartholemew’s suggestions for getting the most out of a small space (Square Foot Gardening, Rodale, 1994), she draws 4-foot squares using 4-foot tomato stakes, then marks the square’s corners with short metal stakes. With an 18-inch-wide path around the square she can reach in from any side to tend the plants. She documents the entire garden—where each heirloom tomato is located, for instance—on her computer, noting in it landmarks, such as the patio, driveway and lawn.

Di Nardo raises her plants from seed and she and her husband, who also is legally blind, cook up a storm of great sauces at the end of the season from the garden’s bounty. She makes it sound easy.

“I generally just let my touch replace sight. Since I’m 54 and have been gardening since I was a kid, most things I grow are very familiar,” she says.

Keeping the Garden Alive

Northern Michigan gardener Connie Payne is legally blind from a condition known as retinitis pigmentosa. Her vision is limited to a small central spot, which is also imperfect. But as her vision has deteriorated, she has been unwilling to give up gardening. She has learned to identify plants using her senses of touch and smell. By rubbing a leaf, for instance, she can note its scent and feel its texture, as well as how it grows on the plant. She learns the shape of blooms and the plant’s form by touch, too. As she has become more aware of shape, texture and fragrance, she is better able to distinguish between the plants she wants to grow and unwanted weeds as she moves her hand across the ground.

Like Di Nardo, she loves to grow tomatoes and marigolds, which are easy to identify by touch and smell. When purchasing plants, she gets help reading the plant tags, paying special attention to height, color of bloom and suggested site. She says that adding a double row of patio stones—8-by-16-inch blocks—to her garden’s edge has helped her to recognize it more easily. Her favorite herbs for texture and fragrance are garden sage, creeping thyme, tarragon and various members of the mint family, which are easy to recognize by their square stems. She also loves groundcovers, such as sweet woodruff and the dead nettle ‘Orchid Frost’ (Lamium spp.) for their low, compact growth. “I don’t like bending over to smell or weed and getting poked in the eye by a plant I cannot see,” she says.

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